“And there, dear fellow graduates, lies our challenge. How do we bring theology to hold hands with the vocation stories of the people we will serve? How do we make the matter of theology actually matter to them? Do we preach to the people so they learn more about God? Or do we first see God in them and let them speak for him?”
Distinguished commencement speaker, Ms. Eva Galvey, LST president, Fr. Jose Quilongquilong, SJ, Reverend Fr. Provincial and Vice-Chancellor, Fr. Primitivo Viray, SJ, Administrators and Professors, Superiors and formators of our religious communities, dear family and relatives, fellow graduates and friends, good afternoon.
I, as I’m sure you are as well, feel very grateful especially today, our graduation. I feel grateful because we’re graduating from theology studies and also because I actually never thought this time would come. Five years ago, right before theology studies, I had a vocation crisis. It was a difficult time when I couldn’t find any fulfillment in school and community life. I felt tired. Worse, I felt empty. When you’re in vocation crisis, you don’t really feel doing anything quite “vocational.” So, became less faithful to my own vocation. I prayed less. I didn’t show up very much for community activities. I turned in on myself, on my exhaustion, on my emptiness, and became quite absorbed in feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, rebellion, disquiet. I actually considered leaving religious life and becoming a doctor instead of proceeding to theology, and I actually told my formators of my plan. Well, they had another plan. They asked that I give it a year of discernment and prayer. I’m now grateful that they did, because after putting it all in discernment and prayer, I decided to proceed to theology studies and stay a Jesuit. If I stayed self-absorbed in my feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, rebellion, and disquiet, I would have made the worst decision in my life. Thank God for “divine revelation,” through the calm and wisdom of religious formators, God revealed the divine face of goodness to a face of despair. God revealed what was best for me though difficult, when I desired what I thought was good but easy. God revealed how he had not given up on me when I had had already given up on myself. How typical of God, isn’t it? To have “other plans” for his people, better plans, filled with gentle signs and wonders…saving his people from the worst that they could desire for themselves.
When we began our theological studies, we understood theology to be “the study of the nature of God and of religious belief.” But as our studies wore on, I realized that there was more to theology than being “a study of.” I hope I learned theology well when I now say that theology is, yes, a “study of,” but only as a starting point. Further down and deeper, theology is more importantly about our relationship with God. Before theology, as well as in the beginning of theology, I already knew up here (point to head) that God is one, true, good, and beautiful. And theology gave me the tools to explain what “one” means in Dr. Yap’s course in Trinity; and what “true” means in Fr. Ritchie’s course in Morals; and what “good” means in Fr. Manoling’s Christology; and what “beautiful” means, in Fr. Arnel’s Creation class. But further down and deeper, theology was more than just “definitional.” It was really “relational.” Because this one God is the power that holds us together—both intra-personally and interpersonally. This true God exposes what is false and makes us love the real. This good God looks more into our goodness rather than our sin. And to this beautiful God, we are all beautiful in spite of all that we think is ugly and revolting within. And the clearest, most personal proof I have that God is all of that is that “God has spoken to us through a Son,” even as “in many and various ways, God has spoken to the prophets.” If you have a vocation crisis, that’s the kind of theology you’d want to be helpful to you, the theology that makes you realize that this God we worship and fear—only wishes to show us how one he is with us, how true the salvation he offers, how good he and we are, and how beautifully the person of His Son reveals him to us. Studying Theology allowed me to revisit my life story—my vocation story, for which I know thankfully recognize that in theology, God makes known not only the “what” of divinity, but the “with whom” of divinity. “With us.” “Immanuel.” “Theosis.” “God’s self-communication.” “Grace.”
You and I are one in honoring and thanking our parents, especially our mothers, who taught us the foundations of our faith, by their words and deeds. Nanay taught me my first prayers. She didn’t study any theology. But her faith in God and relationship with God jumpstarted my own. Because of Nanay, God became a personal God, a God of providence—to whom I could turn in times of need. I also am grateful for the Ignatian Spirituality and Jesuit formation. They awakened me to the reality of God who can be found in all things, not just religious things or places, not just in religious people—no, in all things. I am grateful to our school, whose professors mentored me in the scriptural and doctrinal foundations of our faith. But just when I thought I had known God through what the faith teachers, thank God he made himself known also through our stories, our vocation stories, our life stories. I was really pleasantly surprised how theology slowly held hands with my own vocation story, my own life story. In fact, all the subjects we studied made all the more sense when I realized how appropriated and linked theology is with our own experiences—something that doesn’t stay as memory-bytes in our head, but theology and our life as forming the same motherboard of all our words and deeds. And there, dear fellow graduates, lies our challenge. How do we bring theology to hold hands with the vocation stories of the people we will serve? How do we make the matter of theology actually matter to them? Do we preach to the people so they learn more about God? Or do we first see God in them and let them speak for him? Will we teach them formulas about God to make sure that their faith is orthodox? Or should we try to tell them parables about God, the way Jesus did, to make sure that their faith is doxological? That’s the challenge, fellow graduates, of being degree-holders in theology from a Jesuit institution: do we deploy our theology of definitions towards making people orthodox believers? Or do we deploy our theology of relation towards making people glorify and praise and deeply appreciate the unfathomably intimate nearness of God, the gentle power of his Truth incarnated in the Son, and his goodness and beauty as the Holy Spirit that renews the face of the earth?
Dear friends, God has given us so much in and through our formation in LST. As Voltaire first said it, or if you want, Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.” No more papers, no more oral exams—another reason to thank God for, yes! But we leave LST with a very critical mission: to consciously use our theological training to bring people closer to God, to make his presence known and felt, to form community. The pride and value in being LST graduates lies not in graduating from the Ateneo. The pride and value of an LST formation lies in being able to see God and people as intimate friends, both of whom regard each other with deep love and respect, both of whom are ready to die for the other. As Pope Francis says, “If one has the answers to all the questions, that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.” The point is not that we are graduates of Loyola School of Theology—which is God’s gift in itself. The point is that we learned that theology is all about God and his incredible, irrepressible drive to unite us with him all the time.
To go out to God’s people may seem a daunting task. We’re used to the routines in the classroom, the refuge of our air-conditioned library, the comfort Ate Cora’s sisig, or Kris and Vanessa’s fish balls and kikiam. After this gift of familiarity and routine, another door is now open and looks out to what might yet be unfamiliar and uncomfortably new. God may have not have promised that things will be easy. But he did promise in his Son in the Resurrection—and has endlessly proven since then—that He will always be with us “until the end of time.” We feel hopeful and positive about looking forward and moving forward because God never abandons. We learned that in theology. We learned that in life.
I end with a quote from Karl Rahner: “In the ultimate depths of (our) being (we) know nothing more surely than that (our) knowledge…is only a small island in a vast sea that has not been travelled. It is a floating island, and it might be more familiar to us than the sea. But ultimately, (the island) is borne by the sea, and only because it is a sea that we can be borne by it. Hence, the (most important) question for us is this: Which do we love more, the small island of our so-called knowledge, or the sea of infinite mystery?” God is always with us, fellow graduates. And that is one, true, good, and beautiful reason to be grateful.
Congratulations. Thank you. Ad majorem Dei gloriam!
